


the little black hole in your golden cup

by elliebell (Naladot)



Category: Wonder Girls
Genre: Alternate Reality, Fame, Future Fic, Gen, Introspection, No Romance, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-09 18:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20122903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell
Summary: In which Ahn Sohee books a Marvel movie.





	the little black hole in your golden cup

**Author's Note:**

> Just fiction!
> 
> Written for GG Jukebox Round 1, inspired by LA Hallucinations by Carly Rae Jepsen.

* * *

You are thirty years old—old for an idol, old for an actress, but you still read like twenty-two on camera and that’s good enough for crackpot space comedies—and you’re standing on a red carpet in Los Angeles, watching.

A zombie-like horde of photographers writhes just behind the tape fixed across the concrete. The hazy yellow evening sky stretches above the cityscape. Your new publicist, a Korean-American woman younger than you in sky-high heels, taps into her phone with a frown creasing her foundation. Your name glows on the poster behind her:  _ Sohee Ahn.  _

You cross your ankles and lean into your next pose. 

For the first time, you know the world is watching you.

  
  
  


Rewind: you’re seventeen and you’re breaking up with your boyfriend as you wait to go on stage at a Jonas Brothers concert.

It’s the first time you’ve had to do this—speak your mind, that is—and the words all come out clunky.  _ I don’t think you really love me,  _ you say.  _ I don’t think you even know what love is. _

In the back of your mind, you halfway wonder if your brand can survive the loss of your barely-acknowledged relationship. Then again, you’re standing backstage at a Jonas Brothers concert in a sparkly dress, shivering in the air conditioning, and he’s topping charts while crooning about being a heartbreaker, so. There’s some kind of irony mixed up in all that.

“You’re on in five,” says an orange-haired white man in a sweaty polo, and you look around. Your four members sit in identical dresses on a white couch, blotting their makeup and looking very out-of-place. A whirlwind of people buzz in and out of the room. You were wearing the same dresses when you won Song of the Year (and Female Group of the Year. And Best Music Video of the Year. But who’s counting?)

_ I’m tired of being an afterthought,  _ you write. Hit send. 

  
  
  


Fast-forward to the day you met Taika Waititi in a traditional Korean restaurant in Seoul.

“So I watched  _ Train to Busan _ ,” he is saying, speaking faster than you can comprehend. You’re not sure this is the best time to let him know that you closed your English textbooks in 2012 and haven’t opened them since, so you take a piece of dried fish and nod like you have a clue what he’s saying.

You get the gist of it though. New Marvel movie, Thor franchise, and you playing a surprise alien ninja-type warrior. You sign the contract before you’ve even finished dinner. He’s made at least a hundred jokes during that time, which you know because your company’s PR guy keeps laughing even though you’re sure he didn’t get the punchline and just surmised there was a joke because Taika paused. You offer Taika more tea.

  
  
  


“Are you sure that’s the best career move?” Sunmi says later, over the phone, which really isn’t what you were expecting.

“As opposed to what?”

“I thought you wanted to, like, take a back seat for a while,” Sunmi muses. “That’s what you said.”

“I didn’t have a Marvel movie on the table then,” you answer, frowning into your phone.

“Are you sure you’re ready for that level of fame again?” Sunmi asks.

You pick at your manicure, trying to figure out what to say.

  
  
  


Fast-forward to this moment. A paparazzi is screaming at you, and you don’t have a clue what he’s asking. Chris Hemsworth appears to your left, ushering you away from the crowd with one hand hovering above your shoulders and the other giving a practiced wave to the flashing cameras. He’s like another species compared to you, both in his physicality and in his charm. You know that even at your height of fame, you didn’t have that kind of command over the camera’s gaze.

“Just ignore them,” he says, nodding back at the paparazzi and then turning away from you to pose. 

Suddenly you feel something crawling across your skin, the realization that whatever was being screamed at you isn’t anything you want translated. You pass a blonde woman in a headset and move past the crowd and into the venue, where tall men in suits and tall women in long dresses are standing around with glasses of wine, complaining about the heat.

Your publicist catches up with you again, scrolling through her phone and commanding you to recite your scripted interview answers from memory. “And how do you feel to be one of the few Asian women in Marvel’s cast? Did you experience any kind of difficulties learning English for this role? Did you do your own stunts? Was it hard to fit into the suit? What’s going on between you and Sebastian Stan?”

You take a breath, speaking from muscle memory, your mind floating somewhere far away.

  
  
  


For the record: you met Sebastian Stan at an industry party. You talked about your journeys of learning English. You talked about Marvel. In total, the conversation lasted fifteen minutes, and gained you a spot in most American tabloids and headlines on every major gossip website.

Eat your heart out, BTS.

  
  
  


But the truth is, you never wanted to go to America. Even when you were in America, you didn’t want to be in America. You took to the streets of New York City, an anonymous pop star, because you were asked to. You took the stage and spoke in English to meet someone else’s business objectives. You were cynical before you ever went to America, but the work squashed the fifteen-year-old idealistic Sohee right out of you, leaving you more like a cold shell. 

Exactly as an idol should be, in your opinion. Ideals never got anyone anywhere—just look at Sunye.

_ Train to Busan _ was more like a fluke than a real show of ambition, but thanks to it you’ve now got Taika Waititi for a Facebook friend and Miley Cyrus texting you about how much she loves Kpop, so maybe the weirdest thing is that Park Jinyoung hasn’t called you yet to congratulate you on finally making his American Dream come true.

  
  
  


The person who does call you, hours later when you’re standing in a crowded bar between Tessa Thompson’s assistant and Elizabeth Olson’s stylist, is Kwon Jiyong. You hit cancel.

Then you walk out of the bar, into the night, and call him back.

“I saw pictures of you at the premiere,” he says as soon as you’ve exchanged greetings. “You look like a movie star.”

“Thanks,” you say, because you don’t know what else to say. For some reason you’re thinking about these socks he used to wear, plain white with both his big toes poking out of holes at the end. He’d wear them inside his designer shoes, and you always wondered if he was aware of the dissonance between his ratty socks and his expensive shoes. If he can tell that your feet are sore and you’ve lost weight from being too busy to eat regular meals, and if he’s read what everyone back home is saying about you.

“I miss you,” he says.

He’s said that a lot. You think about the first time you broke up with him, and how all it took was one well-timed  _ I miss you _ to reel you right back in. You got back together with him twice, like an idiot. (The third time doesn’t count.) Then again, that all happened before your twentieth birthday. You’d like to think you learned a thing or two in the last decade.

“I’m sure you do,” is what you say into the phone.

  
  
  


You go back to your hotel room and consider actually hooking up with Sebastian Stan while two stylists unsew you from your dress. You have his number, and hooking up with an Asian woman who reads like twenty-two on camera is cliche in a way you assume Hollywood actors would be inclined to. In the end, though, you pull on a pair of threadbare Uniqlo pajamas and go to sit outside by the pool all alone, staring into the electric night.

  
  
  


You used to sit out by the pool like this, back in the day, though rarely alone. At first, it was the almost-original five of you, perfectly manufactured for international stardom. At the top of your game, taking deep breaths of the gritty Los Angeles air, trying to feel the future like a wind against your back.

Then Sunmi left. You’ve never said it, but you all felt a little lost at sea when that happened, a group with a missing limb. You especially. Not because she left the group but because she  _ left, _ moving into her own stream, and ever since you’ve felt like you are speaking slightly different languages, but you never say it, because what is there to say? Fame distorts friendships? And people? What a cliche.

  
  
  


_ “It’s really hard being a child star,”  _ Miley Cyrus said to you once, when she came to visit the set.  _ “But, you know. Fuck ‘em.” _

_ “Yeah,” _ you agreed, thinking about the past.  _ “Fuck ‘em.” _

  
  
  


The next day, it finally happens. You’re sitting in an interview and the interviewer says, “So I checked your IMDB page, and your first English-language credit is a Nickelodeon movie?”

“Teen Nick,” you correct him, because why not be accurate.

“What was that experience like?”

You wonder if there’s a way to imply  _ we got royally screwed over by racist liars _ in English without actually saying it.

“Wonderful,” you say instead. And smile.

  
  
  


The reviews you receive for your Marvel debut in English-language media are glowing—this is not sarcastic nor an exaggeration. They’re really good. “See? I told ‘ya,” Taika says with a wink when you turn up for interviews the next day.

The reviews you receive in Korean-language media are mostly some version of  _ Why not Suzy?  _ Or  _ Why not IU? _ Which is another way of saying  _ why did our least talented star get to be so famous when other people deserve it so much more than her? _

But, hey. You’ve been to this rodeo before.

  
  
  


That night, Sunmi calls you, clearly drunk from the way she’s slurring her words.

“You don’t even want this,” is what she says after she says a lot of other things. “That’s what I can’t get over. You don’t even want it!”

“What do you want me to say?”

Sunmi makes a noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “Nothing. I support women.” She gives another ragged laugh, and then hangs up.

(Another thing you never talked about is that none of the others ever understood why you were the most popular of the five, and neither did you really, but Sunye was everything and Yeeun could sing and Yubin was charismatic, and what was left for Sunmi, then?

What’s left for you, now?)

  
  
  


Two weeks later the movie goes to theaters. You go with your publicist and Sebastian Stan to a theater to see it, because you can. You get papped getting out of your car.

(Kwon Jiyong calls you three times, and you don’t answer, and you don’t call him back.)

(Sunmi has a concert in Los Angeles that starts an hour after you leave the theater, and you don’t go, and you don’t call her back, either.)

  
  
  


Los Angeles means The City of Angels. You roll the words around on your tongue, staring up at planes crossing the blackish haze of the night like shooting stars, and you wonder if this is the feeling Park Jinyoung was trying to inspire in you, all those years ago.

Like you could conquer the world, if you just learned to stop looking back.

  
  
  


“So you started your career as a pop star in Korea,” an interviewer says to you a year later, when you’re promoting Marvel’s newest ensemble film.

“Yes,” you answer.

“Do you miss your pop star days?”

You smile the same smile you’ve been smiling since you were fifteen. 

“Sure,” you say. “They made me who I am.”

_end._


End file.
